Same-sex marriage results - What happens next?

At 10am on Wednesday the Australian public will know the results of the same-sex marriage survey, but there is already growing assumption that the answer will be ‘yes’.

Numerous polls during the voting period have found support for a yes vote is around two-to-one.

Almost 80 per cent of eligible voters have returned their forms at the last count with MPs noting the high response rate to the postal survey means it will be hard to argue the final result is illegitimate.

On October 27 the ABS said it had received 12.3 million responses which equates to 77 per cent of the 16 million eligible voters.

In percentage comparison more people have voted on the issue of same-sex marriage in Australian than Britains voted on Brexit and Americans voted in the last presidential election.

Based on an analysis of polls published between August 1 and October 2 pollster John Stirton concluded with the majority of votes already cast the yes has won.

"It's very hard to see how the 'no' case could win from here unless an awful lot of people are straight-out lying to pollsters," he said.

Could there be a 'no’ win?

Griffith University researches have suggested there could be a narrow victory for the no vote based on an analysis of Australian tweets about the survey last month. They show the result could be a narrow defeat of the yes campaign with 49.17% support.

The researches used a similar method to accurately predict the US presidential election, Brexit vote and Australia’s 2016 federal election.

The Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey is now closed. Thank you to everyone who participated. Results will be published on 15 November. pic.twitter.com/boccc809tb

"If the people have spoken against it, we won't be proposing it at the next election I can assure you,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said.

One Liberal MP told Fairfax Media a vote in the negative would end any attempts within the Liberal party for reform, saying ‘it’s dead, it’s done.’

In the Labor party, even if the result is ‘no’ they are holding to their pledge to introduce a bill to legalise same-sex marriage if they win the next election. Of course this also means waiting until the next election for a parliamentary vote and then it also depends on a Labor victory and any future

If it’s a super close vote: Neither side will really be able to clam a win. Already Tony Abbott has said any ‘no’ vote of 40 per cent would be a ‘moral victory’. A close vote, with a narrow ‘yes’ victory would give an added boost to the push among conservative Liberal MPs to include multiple exemptions in any bill to favour those who don’t support the reform.